MURRIETA: Fire chief wants city to provide ambulance service

A call by Riverside County for cities to weigh in on a debate
regarding ambulance services has revived a desire by the Murrieta
Fire Department to provide that service.

Fire Chief Matt Shobert and City Manager Rick Dudley have
requested that the county consider allowing the city's Fire
Department to provide the services that now are being provided by
American Medical Response. For more than a decade, the for-profit
company has held an exclusive contract for providing ambulance
services to more than 95 percent of the county.

In a four-page letter dated Aug. 8 and addressed to Bruce
Barton, the county's ambulance agency director, Shobert and Dudley
said Murrieta is far better equipped to handle the transport of its
patients to hospitals because:

emergency response crews are local residents who can navigate
the city's streets better than AMR's personnel;

the department's standard response time is more than three
minutes shorter than AMR's standard response time;

and patients are more likely to survive their emergency if they
are treated by one crew from the time they're picked up to the time
they're dropped off at the hospital.

Former Fire Chief Phil Armentrout made the same request in 2003,
but the county denied that request in order to maintain uniform
services among all county cities.

The Murrieta City Council is scheduled to discuss the issue
during Tuesday's 7 p.m. meeting at City Hall, 24601 Jefferson
Ave.

"It's not really a negative perspective toward AMR, because they
do a fine job," Shobert said in a phone interview Friday. "We've
got five strategically placed fire departments and at each corner
of the city we have a hospital. We could set up a very effective,
efficient system because of the location and the size of our city,
and the three hospitals at the corners."

AMR now has ambulances stationed at Fire Stations 2 and 3, which
are located on California Oaks Road and Whitewood Road,
respectively.

The city does not pay for the ambulance services, rather a
person who is transported by AMR is billed $1,200 to $1,500,
Shobert said. But often the patient has received a bulk of the
primary emergency care by a fire paramedic, and is in essence being
billed by AMR for work that his or her tax dollars have already
paid for.

The county has awarded the company exclusive rights to the
contract since 1998. Only a few cities, such as Idyllwild, have
been approved to provide their own services or rely on the county
fire department for emergency transportation.

In April, however, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors
decided to postpone renewing AMR's contract until a review of its
performance is complete. Among other points, supervisors are
weighing whether to open the ambulance service contract up for a
competitive bid. AMR's contract will expire July 1, 2012.

The Riverside County Fire Chiefs Association also has criticized
the lack of a competitive bid for the contract, and in 2008 the
association published a report detailing various issues that had
gone unscrutinized due to the lack of contract review. As a member
of the association, Shobert said he signed his support of the
report when it was published.